BAFTA, WGA Awards Make the Case for a Three-Way Race

I’m not sure if I can live with myself knowing I let exist a world in which Kate Winslet has two Oscars, but that (and more) just might be the case if we’re to take Sunday’s BAFTA Awards results sans a grain of salt.

The 2016 EE BAFTA Awards have done their time-tested job of narrowing the Academy playing field as we near the closing of Oscar voting on February 23. Since (and including) their crowning of 2007’s Atonement Best Film way back when, BAFTA has only misaligned with the Academy’s Best Picture choice two times, as they also awarded Richard Linklater’s Boyhood top honors just last year. Despite taking four BAFTA awards last night, Mad Max: Fury Road is likely little more than the year’s biggest tech contender, as director George Miller, who was largely tipped to win with the DGA last weekend, has failed to pick up much steam (in terms of wins) outside the critics awards. That leaves us with the films that are dominating the guilds and meaningful precursors:

The Revenant is in prime position to repeat with Oscar, at least at the moment. Best Picture typically wins at least one acting award, and Leonardo DiCaprio has won every major precursor (Golden Globes, SAG, BAFTA) that exists, while its scale and scope (12 total nominations, likely pull in a few techs, worldwide box-office approaching $400 million) that makes it an unavoidable beast gobbling up the tail end of the season on size and scope alone.

While Spotlight and The Big Short are picking up The Revenant‘s slack in the Screenplay categories (its adapted script was not nominated), that’s likely they only shot they stand at winning a major category on the basis of simply being present where The Revenant is not. The Big Short‘s PGA statistic (no film that won PGA has lost Best Picture since 2006’s Little Miss Sunshine) is likely an anomaly, which is what most of this year’s precursor awards have felt like thus far. The fact that we’ve been jostled around by so many curveballs (three different films took top honors with the three major guild) has the pundit community reluctant to align behind a single film, even when statistics (a Golden Globe, DGA, and BAFTA win is a strong case for a Best Picture winner) suggest otherwise.

We look to BAFTA as a bellwether for Academy tastes as Oscar grows increasingly British and increasingly stuffy, not to mention the high number of crossover membership that bridges the gap across the pond. They’ve even, in recent years, predicated the Oscar ceremony with last-minute surges for films like The Grand Budapest Hotel, which won five BAFTAs (including one above-the-line in Best Original Screenplay) prior to winning four below-the-line Academy Awards, and we should treat The Revenant’s rise no differently.

In terms of acting, BAFTA deviates far more frequently. Though they matched 100% with Oscar last year and in 2011, they were one for four in 2013 (only Cate Blanchett crossed over from BAFTA to AMPAS), three for four in 2012, two for four in 2010, and two for four again in 2009. They’ve continued the forward momentum for DiCaprio and Larson this year (those races have long been over), but they’ve only stirred the pot in Supporting Actress and Supporting Actor. Winslet has triumphed (for the first time this season, mind you) over Alicia Vikander in the Supporting category, as Vikander was nominated in Lead at the Golden Globes, where Winslet won in Supporting. Though Oscar frontrunner Sylvester Stallone was not nominated at the BAFTAs, Rylance’s win here gives him an extra shot of prestige as we navigate the early days of final Oscar voting. He could upset as Bridge of Spies‘ only Oscar win, but the enthusiastic, sentimental support for Stallone is going to be a difficult thing to squash.

The Revenant is both extremely similar to and vastly different from any other Best Picture winner we’ve seen in recent years. It’s grand, epic, and sprawling much like Titanic (another film that didn’t have a Screenplay nomination but managed to win Best Picture), but it’s also as avant garde as commercial epics get, what with its spiritual, Malick-esque imagery and muted dialogue. Either way, it’s catching on with groups that revel in the male experience, whether it’s fantastical or otherwise, and it’s about time we can clear our minds, part with personal prejudices and opinions (seriously, your opinion on a Best Picture winner’s quality is interesting but very much irrelevant), and accept that we have a single film out front–with two (or three) trailing it quite closely, that is.

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Once, when he was three, Joey Nolfi fancied himself as an exotic type and boldly told someone that he was “from North America.” He’s taken that status as self-appointed ambassador of the North American people and built with it a budding career in entertainment journalism. In other words: he’s written about awards season, film, pop culture, and the arts for a variety of publications including Entertainment Weekly, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, AFROPUNK, East End Fashion Magazine, and Naima Mora Online. He also acts, makes films, moonlights as a DJ/general nightlife legend, and can’t wait for the day that his friends have children that he can to take to the zoo one time and then spend the rest of his life patting himself on the back for it.

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Editor-in-Chief Joey Nolfi sifted through 87 years of Best Picture winners to come up with a formula that gauges Oscar traction. He ranked the films heading into this year's race, so you should check it out.

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RT @joeynolfi: AND ALSO Happy Presidents’ Day to President Natalie Portman at the end of Mars Attacks https://t.co/NrJGzYnAYh